"The longest journey a leader will ever take is the one from the head, to the heart, and back again."

Noted scholar and spiritual leader, Dr. Henrietta Mann (1), offers this wisdom, drawn from the Lakota Indian Tribe, during her opening invocation to the Leadership Montana program participants each year. In her remarks, Dr. Mann suggests a gentle warning about the personal work required to prepare for personal transformation. 

In thinking about the difference between change and transformation, Dr. Mann's wisdom helps us to recognize that while change can be viewed as an event, transformation is a process.  It involves a journey in which leaders must hold the tension of the opposites between doing and being, thinking and feeling, knowing and uncertainty, steadfastness and letting go.

Read the complete article to find out more about the process of change and transformation. 

Quotable Quotes

"None of us knows what the next change is going to be, what unexpected opportunity is just around the corner, waiting a few months or a few years to change all the tenor of our lives."
 - Kathleen Norris

"We know what we are, but know not what we may be."
 - William Shakespeare

"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
 - Pablo Picasso

Client Success Story: Transformation in Progress: The National Arthritis Foundation

The National Arthritis Foundation is an organization that offers a great example of how to initiate change that will ultimately lead to major transformation.  Through a well-conceived, and executed, process the organization's leadership launched a complete reorganization of its governance structure in 2005.

The Foundation initiated the change process by convening a Blue Ribbon Task force which first assessed the current organization, defined the desired vision and outcomes for a new structure and engaged in research regarding best practices from respected not for profit organizations in the voluntary health sector. Based on this research, the Board next convened a team of approximately 100 respected leaders, representing every chapter across the country, to help define and design the new governance structure.

Read the complete article to find out all the details about this great success story.

Suggested Readings

Beyond Change Management

 - Dean Ackerman, Linda Ackerman Anderson, Pfeiffer, 2001

The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything

 - Stephen M.R. Covey, Stephen R. Covey and Rebecca R. Merrill, Free Press, 2006

Organizational Culture and Leadership

 - Edgar Schein, Jossey-Bass, 2004

Upcoming Events
Hear Irma Tyler-Wood Speak!

For more information call The Institute for Management Studies at (775) 322-8222.

Reflections on Transformation

A stream was working itself across the country, experiencing little difficulty.  It ran around the rocks and through the mountains.  Then it arrived at a desert.  Just as it had crossed every other barrier, the stream tried to cross this one, but it found that, as fast as it ran into the sand, its waters disappeared.  After many attempts, the stream became very discouraged.  It appeared that there was no way it could continue the journey.

Then a voice came in the wind.  "If you stay the way you are, you cannot cross the sands, you cannot become more than a quagmire.  To go further, you will have to lose yourself."

"But if I lose myself," the stream cried, "I will never know what I am supposed to be."

"Oh, on the contrary," said the voice.  "If you lose yourself, you will become more than you ever dreamed you could be."

So the stream surrendered to the drying sun.  And the clouds into which it was formed were carried by the raging wind for many miles.  Once it crossed the desert, the stream poured down from the skies, fresh and clean, and full of energy that comes from storms.

*This story is adapted from the Sufi Tales

In the News

Katherine Tyler Scott recently wrote an article for the International Leadership Association's newsletter called The Courage to Lead. 

To read the article go to the International Leadership Association website.

Upcoming Open Enrollment Events

Registration: Register online or call 317-822-8205

Here's What You Will Find in the Next Issue of eBridge

When managing change or mediating conflict we often caution clients to increase the level of communication. What does this really mean? What type of communication, who should say what and how should it be said? 

In our next issue we will focus on the art of communication and how effective communication is an essential ingredient to adaptive leadership. Ki ThoughtBridge senior consultants Bob Volpe and Sallie Suby-Long will offer insights from the field on ways to take key communication principals into action strategies!